I recently received an unexpected gift in the mail.
And in person…
And in several persons…
But first, it began with a cup of tea.
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Divisible by Love
As my favorite tv show—The Big Bang Theory—comes to an end, it wrestled recently with a surprisingly feminist sub-plot: whether or not a woman should want to have children and what it means if she doesn’t. The series frequently pokes fun at parenting including the ambivalence surrounding having kids. Perhaps I have laughed a little too hard at some of these jokes, or maybe I appreciate that someone had raised a question that bothers me in my own struggles with motherhood*.
A Letter to a Friend
I began writing and was interrupted by life. This is an expansion of a letter I wrote in the time that came before and the inspiration that followed…
To my friend K____, who lies bored in a hospital bed waiting for things to happen. May the butterflies find you.
Everything has gone wrong.
I’m sending this to you from a secure location.*
The system has been infected.
A technician is scheduled to come out (for the third time) to fix it.
Your connection is not private.
Attackers may be trying to steal your information.
Save yourselves. Continue reading You May Not Be Safe
Stupid Entropy
I have always wanted to be a smart person. Or, at least, to feel like I was a smart person.
I have also been suffering lately from the certainty that I am not getting any smarter. In fact, there is evidence to suggest I may be regressing and losing my faculties altogether.
In other words, I am getting dumber.
How do I know this? I tried recently to be clever and failed.
I attempted to write a post. I wanted to be witty and erudite, to create a mathematical equation quantifying the values of parenting–like something you might see on a white board on The Big Bang Theory set. I wrote for hours. I struggled. I waffled. I flailed in my efforts to write what my brain kept telling me what should be a funny post.
At the same time, I have been trying to research what kind of cell phone or carrier to switch before my iPhone dies for good. The more I read on the topic, the less sure I am that I am capable of making a rational, informed decision.
To stave off complete digital death, I switched off as many features of my ‘smart’ phone so as to conserve the battery life past a nano-second. I turned off so many functions, my phone stopped receiving voicemails and texts. As a result, my ‘smart’ phone is now a dumb phone which is holding my information hostage until I turn my data back on.
Didn’t phones used to just work before ‘data’ was invented?*
Why is a phone designed to use data to send a message anyway?**
*shouts into the abyss*
WHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYY?
In my efforts to keep my phone running while not plugged into a recharger, I even deleted Facebook from my apps.
The entire next day I learned exactly how often I have been checking Facebook. Like, every fricking time I had a break…or had to wait in line…or stopped at a red light for more than two seconds. I wish I were kidding.
So, I’ve learned two things this week: I am not getting smarter and my phone is possibly making me dumber.
In my research for ‘smart’ terminology, I found a physics term that I feel describes my mental state:
En·tro·py, noun
/ˈentrəpē/
PHYSICS
- a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.
- lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.
Apparently I am suffering from a terminal case of entropy.***
Let’s just hope it’s not stupidly fatal.
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:
*C’mon conspiracy theory junkies, give me your best explanation for why phones cost ten times as much to do half as well for less years than you’d like. And then tell me why we fall for it?
**GROUP BREAK-OUT SESSION: What exactly is DATA and why is it the new gold standard for the inequalities between the haves and the have-nots? Discuss.
***Additional proof of my stupidification is denoted by the fact that I have to use the second definition of Entropy to understand the meaning of the word.
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The Image Stolen for this header comes from a site that did a much better job of actually explaining entropy–in case any of you are smarter and want to read up on it.
Mulan-ing It Up and Deciphering Pernicious Plumbing Portents
In science fiction/fantasy stories, when the heroine has pissed off the gods or broken the ancient talisman of her people, she can go on a quest to redeem her honor. Sure, she may have to crop her hair and dress like a boy to defeat the Hun army…but in the end, it’s worth it.
She returns with the seal of the emperor and is held up as an example of once-in-a-lifetime courage and fortitude. At the very least, she is welcomed back home with cries of “Huzzah” or a marriage proposal.
At what point does our heroine realize that she is in an epic battle for her existence?* Maybe to her it just seemed like a lot of bad luck rolled up on her at once?
I ask this question, in truth, because I think I missed a giant clue along the way.
Or I’ve defiled a temple somewhere and the gods are angry.
I’m not entirely sure when it happened.
But I think it started with the toilet. Continue reading Mulan-ing It Up and Deciphering Pernicious Plumbing Portents
Happy Lousy Valentine
We were introduced by a friend.
She didn’t know you would be so clingy, so demanding.
Such a total leech.
Sucking the life out of me.
But when you started in on my kid, that was it.
It was time for you to go.
It wasn’t easy.
You didn’t want to leave.
It was clear.
You had to die.
Stuck home on a snow day, I’m Googling ways to end you.
It wasn’t enough to get rid of you.
I had to totally erase your existence.
Clean anything you’d touched like a literal plague.
Boiling all the sheets was easy enough.
But trying to get a kid to sit still, while I tore your influence away one painstaking strand at a time?
Just awful.
Everything had to be examined.
All the lies and denials.
It was a total nit-picking nightmare.
I went to a specialist.
We went over everything.
Talked about how you wouldn’t let go.
How I just wanted to cut you out of my life so badly I was willing to get rid of anything you held dear.
“Just do it.” I told her. “Quick, like a band-aid. I’ll close my eyes and think of Sinead, Sean, and Shaquille. They’ve made it work for them.”
She talked me down from the nuclear option.
Getting your hair done is usually a calm, soothing experience.*
But getting rid of you was not.
With every stroke, it felt like I was being pulled in two.
As she scorched my tresses in thirty-second blasts, I visualized you frying until your little head popped.
I imagined your tiny death rattle.
And then I went home and cleaned like a woman possessed.
If you’d touched it, into the garbage, laundry, or freezer it went.
And then, I tackled my child.
It wasn’t pretty.
It wasn’t fun.
But it had to be done.
And if you ever come back into my life, I will totally do it again.
Breaking up is hard to do.
But in eleven days, after a repeat cathartic cleansing, it’ll be over.
I’ll finally be rid of you.**
Happy Lousy Valentine’s Day, you creep.
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:
*I’ve never paid so much to have my hair done only to leave a ‘stylist’ looking more like a train wreck. Except for the time I went to high-end salon and they gave me (without my permission) some godawful cut called a ‘Rachel.’ Looking back, even this experience wasn’t that bad!
**Don’t visit us for at least two weeks to be safe.
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You read this far bonus:
I found a weirdly appropriate book in French while searching for Google images to accompany this post. I couldn’t quite fit it into the above text but wanted to share it with you.
Here is: The Terrible Adventures of Valentine and Her 118 Lice.
Yes, I’m giving you lice for Valentines.
It truly is the gift that keeps on giving.
Featured image available at: https://www.toilette-humor.com/valentines/valentines_heart_rejects.shtml
What the Flake?
Dear Powers That Be:
I don’t know who you are but you obviously don’t have any school-aged kids at home, or you would understand what level hell you are putting us through. By us, I mean parents who had hopes of getting through this winter alive with our sanity intact. But no. You’ve trapped us in our homes with our children for, FLAKE*, what is it? Ten days now? Eleven? I’ve lost count of how many flaking snow days it’s been. Continue reading What the Flake?
SNOW
As the fourth snow day in a row reveals the madness of winter housebound by frigid air and fluffy white stuff, I am revisiting a piece I wrote in 2015. Truer today than it ever has been.
Snow, as heavy as death,
How you break the frail back.
Shoveling is a gladiator sport, and
Winter is the lion which slays you.
Roar the oncoming hordes of flakes.
Sodden mittens clench the staff,
A blade against an unrelenting foe.
Blisters in anticipation.
Hurl the churlish weapon in futile rage.
A pain given is a pain received,
For every shovelful is death to someone.
And snowmen weep when the sun comes out.
Latticed crystals mock in six-sided glee
Covering once more the open ground.
Laying the monstrous earth to sleep.
Writing epitaphs in mounds of white.
First Words
Cave paintings tell the oldest tales.
Charcoal impressions of a Neolithic age.
Ancient stone stories echo authors past.
Symbolic of the writer’s rocky path.
Once pried from cold, hard stone
You ask yourself, were they there all along?*
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First Words
by K. L. K. Salazar
What siren song do fissures sing?
Elusive, mutable—so close, yet out of reach.
Can anybody hear you? See you?
Or do you speak only to my soul?
Hidden deep, in crevasses unknown.
Only found in shadows, on lichen-crusted clefts.
Under a winter’s sky—cold and blown.
A resonance of stone.
Falling, hitting, frozen things.
Echo shots creation brings, broken and rebuilt.
Etched in deep, where all words hide.
Unexpected meaning lies, unrefined,
Inside. Pitched to black and deeper reaches
No one knows what they may find.
When broken from the rock, words flow.
Released like melting snow
Warmed by sun’s beat.
Through erosion, exposition unfolds.
While I am weathered
Glacially slow.
Imperfections reveal
Dreams fragmentary and unreal.
Part hope.
Part defeat.
Cemented with faults.
I am stratified
Awaiting metamorphosis.
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:
*I wouldn’t ordinarily have a footnote to my poetry. But I’ve never had this happen before. I don’t know what to call that little slice of word jumble at the top. I tried leaving it out and that felt wrong. I tried putting it in…even wronger. Is it a foreword? A prelude? A prequel? I’m not sure what to call it. So, I’m not calling it anything. It just is. And I hope that is enough.
TheDustSeason 